


The Book on the Counter

by SuicunesRibbonButt



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2184144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuicunesRibbonButt/pseuds/SuicunesRibbonButt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time has gone by since Morty last heard from Eusine. Whitney never stops worrying; Morty is one of her closest friends, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Book on the Counter

**Author's Note:**

> No names directly used, only pronouns, though it should be clear who is being referred to when.

He sat at his kitchen table alone, the only light in the room a dim yellow one coming from a desk lamp propped up on the counter. He didn’t need anything brighter than that. He was eating dinner. A frozen fried chicken meal, again.  
The sound of the phone ringing made him jump and drop his fork. He didn’t bother answering it. He continued to sit there silently in the flickering yellow light.   
He pushed away what was left of his food. The fork still laid on the edge of the table. There was no use in picking it up. Instead, he looked down at his hands, picked at his nail beds, peeled the edges of the Band-Aids he had on his forearms. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the book sitting on the counter next to the desk lamp, buried under various papers and a few orange peels that were starting to rot. He shifted in his seat a bit, eventually standing up after not being able to get comfortable. He didn’t go anywhere. He just stood there, silent and still, the only thing that disrupted his posture was his sudden burst of coughing.   
Something made his feet move towards the counter. He took heavy steps, didn’t bother looking up. The whole way to the counter, he stared down at his feet, clothed in his sister’s mismatched socks from long ago. His chapped bottom lip split as he bit down on it.   
For about ten minutes he stood at the counter, his palms pressed down against the cold granite, his lip still pressed between his teeth. Slowly, he inched his hands closer to the desk lamp, closer to the pile of papers, closer to the rotting orange peels, closer to the book buried under it all.   
“No,” he mustered out as he pulled his hands away. 

Once again, the phone rang. This time, he answered it. The woman’s voice on the other end had a hint of worry in it.  
“Are you okay?”   
He gave her no response.   
“What did you eat today?”   
“Something I found in my freezer.” He talked quiet and monotone.   
“Oh.”  
“Yeah.” There was a pause in the conversation and he sat on the floor, legs crossed.  
“Have you heard from him yet?” The woman’s vocal tone went from worrying, to unmistakably sad.   
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would you care, anyway?”   
“Yes you do. You know, you know, stop lying, please I hate it when you lie.”  
Her voice sped up as she spoke then fell back down when she said her final  
words to him. “Just promise me you’ll be okay. No matter what.”   
He didn’t say anything back to her. He continued to sit there, holding the phone up to his ear, breathing into it while listening to her breathe back. Two minutes passed until she finally hung up on him. He left the phone on the floor and stood up quickly. Once on his feet, his vision went black from standing up too fast. That didn’t stop him from stumbling his way back towards the counter. 

There was no hesitation this time. He threw the orange peels to the side, knocked the papers to the floor, his hand hit the desk lamp in the process, knocking the bulb a bit out of place, making it flicker even more than before.   
With trembling hands, he picked up the book. It was thicker than he remembered, but then again, they’d been using it to write messages back and forth to each other since they were little. He flipped through the pages, watching as the handwriting gradually got better as he neared the back where the more recent messages were written. It was almost like he saw them grow up right before his very eyes. Their naïve dreams of the future, their high school troubles, their drunken love notes, it was all there.   
The last page, in plain black pen and unfathomably neat handwriting, was where it was written, dated two months and nine days ago. 

“I want to get away for a while. We need to take a break. I’ll see you in a couple of days. I love you.” 

All he could bring himself to do was close the book and stare at the beat up black cover with the white underside showing through from the peeling corners.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my creative writing class lol my teacher made me read it out loud. It was awful.


End file.
